Climber Warmly Greets 2 Who Saved Him on Mt. Fuji’s Icy Slopes

Leonard Efron won’t soon forget the sense of pride he felt climbing snow-covered Mt. Fuji on his last trip to Japan, because it was exactly that feeling of invincibility that led him to make a mistake that nearly cost him his life.

“I got cocky.” said Efron, 64. As he descended from the mountain’s 12,000-foot summit, he lost his footing and crashed down more than 300 feet. Immobilized with a broken pelvis, he screamed for help.

Not only did two young Japanese climbers respond to his cries, but they also had a vital piece of equipment. Recalling last November’s experience, Efron said that when they arrived, he heard “the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard: ‘I have a cell phone.’ ”

On Wednesday Efron was reunited with his rescuers at Los Angeles International Airport. The senior engineer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used his frequent-flier miles to bring his two new friends to Los Angeles for a visit.

Efron and his family greeted the two Japanese Samaritans under the glare of television camera lights. Keiko Asano, 31, and Kazuhito Hachiya, 38, had to be coaxed out of the baggage claim area to face a swarm of reporters.

After the two climbers summoned help, Efron said, they risked their lives by staying with him for eight hours in freezing weather until a rescue unit arrived.

With an arm around each of them, Efron declared, “Now I have a new son and daughter!”

The two rescuers will be honored at JPL on Friday with a special group achievement award from NASA.

Efron was in Japan last year as a JPL representative at an annual conference of space agencies. The avid climber and marathon runner used a free day Nov. 11 to scale Mt. Fuji. Shortly before he began his descent, he greeted a pair of climbers--a young man and woman who had just reached the top.

Delighted at having reached the summit in just six hours, Efron recalled, he was hurrying on his way down.

“I was moving a little too fast and then I broke one of the rules of climbing,” he said. Efron was zigzagging down the ice. As he neared a point to switch directions, he failed to stop completely before he turned.

His crampons--steel spikes strapped to a climber’s boot--suddenly ripped loose. Efron flipped over and slid feet first on his belly.

Efron recalled that all he could see was the brilliant glistening ice as his body shot down the 45-degree slope. The only sound was the “woosh” of his nylon jacket against the surface.

Efron said he managed to grasp a rock the size of a watermelon and pounded it against the ice, but it didn’t hold.

“I thought I was a goner,” Efron recalled, until he hit something that halted his fall. The collision fractured his pelvis. He also ended up with broken hands.

Efron was able to stand but unable to walk. He lay on the ice to rest, and hoped that the couple he had seen at the summit might hear him. He began to yell.

Within a few minutes, he said, a woman’s voice shouted to him: “Are you all right?”

The two climbers worked their way down to where he lay and then used pickaxes to dig a chair in the ice for Efron. They wrapped his body in nylon tenting and lay on both sides side of him to keep him warm.

As night fell, it had become apparent that a rescue team would be unable to fly in. Fearful that his rescuers might die from hypothermia, Efron begged them to leave, but they refused.

Police and volunteer rescuers finally arrived on foot and carried him down as he lay on a padded snowboard.

“To help him was natural,” said Asano, who has been mountain climbing for seven years. Her friend Hachiya has 20 years’ experience.

“Mt. Fuji is a very beautiful-looking mountain,” Efron said. “But mountains don’t care and when you make a mistake, they’re unforgiving.”

Efron said he never should have hiked the mountain alone in the winter and should have had a pickax. But he said he’s learned his lesson and the ordeal he survived will not stop him from climbing Mt. Fuji again.

“It’s like falling off a horse,” he said. “You just have to get back on.”

Efron will get his chance this week to honor the request of his guests, who want to climb a 10,000-foot mountain in California.

Jane Platt, of JPL, said Efron is not one to sit around.

“A lot of people would be terrified after having an accident of this sort,” she said. “But it’s not going to keep him down.”